Tag Archives: MaKey Makey

There’s lots to get ready: from giant fruit and projected video games through to mask templates and novelty synthesisers. But the plus side is that we have to test them all and come up with all the cool ideas (well the first layer, anyway – we’re sure you’ll add plenty more inventiveness on top of what we start off with!).

Here are some photos from our initial planning meeting:

It wasn’t long before other people in the office were coming over to see what was going on. Turns out Dave-from-Marketing’s got some latent musical talent, too!

We’ll be using MaKey MaKey for a couple of the activities and we’re anticipating them being, shall we say, quite energetic, so I’ve also started making an extension/fortification board to a) make things a bit more robust b) make it easier to access as many different inputs as possible and c) provide a way of connecting a variety of different leads.

Blank canvases are always a little daunting, so we’ve seeded a few things for you to think about and get your creative juices flowing: basic skills in Arduino and soldering, as well as leaping around like a crazy leapy thing (see below). You are of course welcome to work on projects of your own devising too!

Basic skills: Arduino

One of our Arduino kits available for you to use.

Our background is in the hackspace movement and interactive art, where Arduino is a nifty little computing device that can link the digital and physical worlds. It makes it very easy to do amazing things even if, like us, you’ve never had any formal programming training.

Check out the Arduino section on Instructables for a few examples of what’s possible. On the page as we type are step-by-step instructions for projects like a capacitive touch piano, an Iron Man costume, a morse code generator, robots, blinky lights and a hacked Roomba.

Arduino projects on Instructables

We’ve got 2 Arduino kits available for you to use at Maker Nights to try out and learn the basics. Bring a laptop with the Arduino software installed on it and we’ll help you get some LEDs blinking as the first step towards your mad inventions!

If anyone feels like making a Loud Noise Device that we can use for The Great Big Skills Share Jamboree, that would be most appreciated. We’d like something fun (and LOUD!) we can use to time participant introductions and the skills-sharing sessions.

Basic skills: Soldering

There are lots of kits around for cool things that you can make yourself. To do this you’ll need to be able to solder. Again, we have 2 soldering kits for you to use and we can teach you the basics so you feel comfortable to work independently on your projects.

Leaping around like a crazy leapy thing

Basically you can connect up different things to the board and then use these to simulate keyboard button presses and mouse clicks.

For our first attempt we sliced up some space blanket, gaffa taped it to the floor, connected the MaKey MaKey and loaded up a game featuring a jumping monkey. It may have had us jumping around a fair bit too…

Combine game, objects and MaKey MaKey to invent a game that’s crazy silly and fun to play!

The Youth Orchestra will be downstairs with their tuck shop, so there’s easy access to calories and additives to fuel this process!

So: see you there!

We’ll be up on the 3rd floor in the Long Room. If you go to the reception desk near the main entrance the staff will give you directions. Drop in any time between 5 and 9:30ish. The Maker Nights are free, as is the wi-fi.

Please note: The main café closes at 4:30, but you should be able to find somewhere selling food on the nearby high street if you need to.